As a return for our information, he told us that the Gorilla was everywhere to be found, even in the bush behind his town.  The rain coming down heavily, I was persuaded to pass the night there, the king offering to beat the bush with us, to engage hunters, and to find a canoe which would carry the party to Sanga-Tanga, landing us at all the likely places.  I agreed the more willingly to the suggestion of a cruize, as my Mpongwe fashionables, like the Congoese, and unlike the Yorubans, proved to be bad and untrained walkers; they complained of sore feet, and they were always anticipating attacks of fever.

When the delicious sea-breeze had tempered the heat, we set out for the forest, and passed the afternoon in acquiring a certainty that we had again been “done.”  However, we saw the new guides, and supplied them with ammunition for the next day.  The evening was still and close; the Ifuru (sandflies) and the Nchuna (a red gad-fly) were troublesome as usual, and at night the mosquitoes phlebotomized us till we hailed the dawn.[FN#18] A delightful bath of salt followed by fresh water, effectually quenched the fiery irritation of these immundicities.

Wednesday, as we might have expected, was wasted, although the cool and cloudy weather was perfection for a cruize.  As we sat waiting for a boat, a youth rushed in breathless, reporting that he had just seen an “ole man gorilla” sitting in a tree hard by.  I followed him incredulously at first, but presently the crashing of boughs and distant grunts, somewhat like huhh! huhh! huhh! caused immense excitement.  After half a day’s hard work, which resulted in nothing, I returned to Bwamange, and met the “boat-king,” whose capital was an adjacent settlement of three huts.  He was in rags, and my diary might have recorded, Recu un roi dans un tres fichu etat.  He was accompanied by a young wife, with a huge toupel, and a gang of slaves, who sat down and stared till their eyes blinked and watered.  For the loan of his old canoe he asked the moderate sum of fifteen dollars per diem, which finally fell to two dollars; but there was a suspicious reservation anent oars, paddles and rudder, mast and sail.

Meanwhile the sanguine Selim compelled his guide to keep moving in the direction of the gorilla’s grunt, and explaining his reluctance to advance by the fear of meeting the brute in the dark.  Savage Africa, however, had as usual the better of the game, and showed his ’cuteness by planting my factotum in mud thigh-deep.  After dark Forteune returned.  He had fired at a huge njina, but this time the cap had snapped.  As the monster was close, and had shown signs of wrath, we were expected to congratulate Nimrod on his escape.  Kindly observe the neat gradations, the artistic sorites of Mpongwe lies.